[Digital Daily, Reporter Chae Seong-oh] SK Telecom has announced its goal to increase the proportion of its revenue from the artificial intelligence (AI) sector to 35% by 2030.
On the 24th, SK Telecom disclosed its “Corporate Value Enhancement Plan.” The plan outlines three key objectives: capital efficiency, shareholder returns, and the “AI Vision 2030.”
According to the disclosure, SK Telecom aims to achieve a return on equity (ROE) of over 10% by 2026 and return more than 50% of net income to shareholders on a consolidated basis. Furthermore, the company plans to achieve total revenue of 30 trillion won by 2030 and increase the AI revenue share to 35% with the “AI Vision 2030.”
Having recorded an ROE of 9.6% last year, SK Telecom shared plans to boost ROE by leveraging telecommunications—a major existing business—and AI, a new growth engine, as two supporting pillars. To strengthen core competitiveness, the company plans to enhance the operational efficiency of its telecommunications business while simultaneously promoting synergy with new business growth.
SK Telecom explained that to bolster new growth engines, the AI business structure would be further segmented. The strategy involves detailing the “AI Pyramid Strategy,” which is divided into AI Infrastructure, AIX, and AI Services, to establish a so-called “money-making AI” system.
In the AI Pyramid’s first tier, the AI Infrastructure sector focuses on the “AI Data Center (DC)” business. With experience in operating domestic 100MW scale data centers and nationwide base stations applicable as AI infrastructure, SK Telecom plans to enhance its competitiveness in this area.
In the AIX tier, which is the second level, the focus is on business-to-business (B2B) transactions. SK Telecom intends to continuously expand external solutions based on the B2B growth potential driven by increased AI utilization among domestic companies and enhance synergy through SK Group’s enterprise AIX task force (TF), such as SK C&C and SK Networks. By combining internal strength and collaboration, the company plans to elevate its technological prowess by relying on its own technologies and external partnerships like AidotX, Anthropic (Claude), and OpenAI (ChatGPT).
At the top tier of the AI Pyramid Strategy, in the AI Services area, the goal is to secure leadership through a business model (BM) transition related to individual customers (B2C). SK Telecom has expanded customer choice and market reach by offering the AI personal assistant “Aidot” and the subscription service “T Universe” to diversify customer AI experiences. The company plans to proceed with business and technology alliances between these platforms while separately advancing the “Global Personal AI Agent (GPAA),” which is expected to release a beta service at the end of this year.
Additionally, SK Telecom aims to improve its financial structure by reducing its debt ratio and net debt to cut interest expenses. Through this, the company seeks to reserve capacity for long-term growth investments while improving capital profitability and asset efficiency, thereby transforming its corporate structure.
An SK Telecom representative stated through the disclosure, “The board meeting held on October 24 completed a report on the corporate value enhancement plan,” and added, “The plan may change according to market conditions and changes in the business environment, and subsequent disclosures will be made for the next business year following the guidelines for announcing corporate value enhancement plans.”